The creature under the bed

 The key entered the lock. The maggot clicked briefly. The man took out the key and put it in his pants pocket. He carefully pushed the door, which, as if reluctantly, opened a small crack. Tilting his head to the side, the man peered into it, trying to see what was behind the door. However, he saw nothing but darkness.

He grabbed the backpack lying at his feet by the straps, pushed the door, forcing it open.

"Home, sweet home," a soft voice sounded sadly, and the man crossed the threshold.

Ilya stood in the hallway, trying to get used to the surrounding darkness. Only recently he had been in the light, and now he was alone among vague contours, blurred borders, black shadows and incomprehensible sounds. He took a deep breath and coughed at the dust.

"We need to air it out," he decided for himself, dropped his backpack, there was something rattling, but he did not pay attention to it.

Without taking off his shoes, he walked deeper into the apartment. He stood in front of the dark rectangle of the room. After standing for a few seconds, I felt the light switch. There was a soft click and an electric light flashed in the center of the small room, making the man squint.

"It's been a long time since I've been here," his cheek twitched with displeasure.

Ilya turned around and looked at the open door in the hallway. He quickly approached it, looked out into the corridor, and then closed it, turned the key in the lock several times. He stretched out his hand to the side and flipped the switch.

The man walked around the apartment, turning on the light. When all the lamps and fixtures were lit, he stopped in the middle of the living room, looked around, turning on the spot.

"We'll have to clean up everything here," he looked around once more, noting the thick layer of dust on the shelves, the TV, and the tape recorder. He added bleakly, "Carefully."

Ilya was glad that he had returned home, but after a long flight, an exhausting train ride, and a two-hour traffic jam in a car, he wanted to stumble into the apartment, take a shower, fall on the bed and fall asleep. But he couldn't sleep when everything was covered with a centimeter layer of dust.

—Water, cloth, soap," he commanded himself and went into the bathroom.

A frosty wind blew through the open window, driving the remaining dust into the corners, as if trying to help her hide. Ilya found her there, ruthlessly destroying her with improvised means. The moon looked on impassively at all this, sometimes hiding behind heavy clouds.

Only three hours later, the man tiredly put down the rag, poured out the last bucket of dirty water, put the detergent back in place.

He wiped his sweaty forehead. "All that remains is to take a shower and sleep," he yawned widely, looked towards the bedroom and began to slowly undress, trying not to let the dust that had settled on him scatter around the bathroom.

The newly made bed creaked with displeasure, the mattress bent slightly, taking his weight on itself. Ilya leaned back against the pillows, looked with sleepy eyes at the window, where a bedroom and a man lying in bed were displayed in blurred shapes.

He said a short prayer. He crossed himself. He pulled the blanket up to his chin and, without turning off the light, finally fell asleep.

Ilya opened his eyes when the moon was still reigning outside the window, just as impassively looking at him through the thickness of the glass. In stark contrast to the dark background, light white snow was falling. Some snowflakes, blown by the wind, flew into the room. The man shivered, wrapped himself in a blanket more tightly, remembering that he had forgotten to turn on the thermostat.

"It's cold," he complained to the empty apartment. Then he abruptly threw back the blanket, shuddered from the frost that attacked him, rushed to the radiator and turned the thermostat knob all the way out. He closed the open window and just as quickly got under the covers.

—Half an hour is no more," Ilya gave himself a setup, explained, as if coaxing, "otherwise I'll freeze completely."

He woke up again to the fact that the room was hot, as if he had moved from a snowy, cold city to the tropics. Ilya abruptly opened his eyes. He threw back the blanket. I jumped up in bed and... realized that I had missed the right moment.

"Damn, damn, damn!"  He scolded himself. — Idiot, why did you fall asleep, because you knew you couldn't?!

Without getting off the bed, he crawled to the edge. He peered behind it, warily examining the floor, the shadows on it cast by the lamp. He stood there for several minutes, peering, listening, sniffing the world around him. Then, hopefully, he looked back at the battery where the ill-fated thermostat was located.

"Just to get there," he mouthed, and carefully lowered one foot onto the hot floor. He froze, listening. He also slowly put his other foot down.

It was only three steps to reach the temperature switch and reach out. Normally, he would have done it in two seconds, but now everything has changed.

—You fool," he swore again, and, shrinking inside, took the first step.

My heart was ready to burst my chest. He really wanted to breathe, but Ilya couldn't afford to take a breath. Not now, when there are only two steps left.

The second step. It was so hard for him to do what he did every day with pleasure, and now it's like he's learning to walk again. His hand reached for the thermostat. Ilya noticed that his palm was shaking. He was sweating himself.

He slowly lifted his foot off the floor, moved it forward, carefully, as if afraid that he was in a minefield, placed his bare heel, and began to shift his body weight away from it.

A malicious laugh made him wince.

—Yeah, yeah.

The man turned around abruptly.

—Ilyusha is delicious,— the sarcastic voice repeated, smacking his lips again.

Ilya rushed to the switch. She managed to touch it with her hand, and then she was frozen. Abruptly pulled away from the battery. The frightened look of a young man was reflected in the window, with his arm upraised, which he could not move.

A nasty chuckle came from under the bed.

— Ilyusha is delicious.

The man jerked, trying to escape, but they held him tightly, not allowing him to reach the safety switch.

— no!  There was desperation in the cry. "Go away!"

Ilya felt himself being pulled back. He planted his feet on the floor, trying to stop, but it didn't help. Then he grabbed the handle of the window, trying to stop the movement at least a little.

—Delicious," rumbled a deep rumble from under the bed.

The man was thrown back. He released the pen from his fingers. A soft blow hit my back, and my grip immediately loosened. Ilya realized that he was lying on the bed, although his legs were still hanging on the floor. He jerked them up, jumping on the bed in fright. He pressed himself against the wall.

— no! No! You shouldn't have! Go away!

"I want to eat," came a frustrated voice from under the bed, and she visibly shuddered, lifting her legs off the floor for a moment.

"Go away!"!!  Ilya was ready to cry, there was hysteria in his voice, and his head was splitting from the realization of what he had done. He pressed himself against the wall, trying to merge with it, rather than being on the bed, the last, fragile bulwark that separated him from the One Who Lives Under the Bed.

The bed shook again. This time it was more noticeable; Ilya's legs gave way and he fell on top of her. He immediately grabbed the blanket and pulled it up to his chin.

"You weren't supposed to show up. No, no," he whispered, looking around.

A snide laugh interrupted him, and his voice made him tremble with fright.

"I'll eat you."  It sounded threatening.

The man looked at the thermostat with broken hope, and everything collapsed inside, realizing that now they would not let him get to it.

— Ilyusha ran for a long time, — in the voice from under the bed there was a reproach, which was replaced by disgust: — I'm eating you.

Ilya Skobov will never forget his thirteenth birthday. It was then that he first heard about Who Lives Under the Bed. The boys in the yard chatted about him, telling and retelling the same story in different interpretations several times. Then it was nothing more than a horror story, until evening came.

On that day, summer set a temperature record: the thermometers did not drop below thirty-five degrees, the asphalt melted from the heat, the air froze.

Even the coming of night brought no relief. I had to sleep without a blanket, sprawled on the bed. Ilya got up several times in the middle of the night to wash in the bathroom — it was a relief for a short moment, because even the air conditioner installed in his room did not provide the necessary coolness, only refreshing the body a little.

After one of these trips, the teenager decided to go to sleep on the floor, because it was a little cooler there. He had already laid out a blanket so that it would not be so hard, threw a pillow and lay down on an improvised couch, when a nasty laugh rang out in the room.:

—Ilyusha is delicious," a disgusting voice sounded, and two red-green eyes flashed under the bed.

The guy screamed, so much so that a second later his father burst into the room with a bat in his hands. Ilya spent a long time explaining to him why he was screaming, what he saw, and why there's no one under the bed right now. Naturally, his father didn't believe him, threatening to pull him out if he heard him scream again.

As soon as my father closed the door, the bed shuddered, and his eyes lit up under it, and a malicious laugh rang out. The teenager suppressed a scream, forcefully clamped his mouth. And then The One Who Lives Under the Bed crawled out from under it.

Ilya saw only a shadow that stretched out clawed hands to his feet. Skobov felt a chill that began to constrict him as he rose higher. To his horror, the teenager realized that he was starting to slide off the blanket — he was being pulled under the bed. By some miracle, he managed to escape from the invisible grip and hide in the far corner of the room."Ilyusha is delicious," the chuckle rang out again, and the shadow crept towards him, floating on the carpet in a transparent black spot.

She did not reach out, frozen a few centimeters away from her legs pressed against her body. A hiss of displeasure came from under the bed.

— I want Ilyusha. Give Ilyusha something to eat.

The boy was trembling, not understanding why He had stopped. I didn't realize it until I felt the frosty air descending from above, covering me as if with an invisible cloak, preventing Whoever Lives Under the Bed from grabbing him.

Twenty years have passed since then. The One Who Lives Under the Bed showed up a few more times, scaring him and promising to eat him. Only now did Ilya know how to protect himself: he began to sleep under the air conditioner, flinching every time from vague sounds and voices from the street.

Skobov even went to work in the North to be closer to the cold, but today he had to return to bury his mother. And now he's sitting on the bed, huddled into a tight ball, pulling the covers up to his nose, while the creature under the bed mocks him, promising to eat him.

It was long past midnight on the clock, and dawn was coming soon, but the scary thing was that the monster under the bed wouldn't leave at first light. He would wait patiently, and only the cold could drive him away.

— Ilyusha.

For the last ten minutes, the bed had been shaking incessantly, and the laughter was so disgusting that it bit into my strained nerves and tore them mercilessly.

Skobov tried to break the window, but there was nothing heavy at hand, the pillows only made the glass shake and caused a new storm of malicious laughter.

— Ilyusha is delicious. I want to eat Ilyusha.

"You'll be fine," Skobov snapped, frightened and angry, noticing that the window was slightly moving away from the frame. Apparently, he managed to open it when the creature pulled him. He had hope; if the temperature dropped a few degrees, Whoever Was Living Under the Bed would leave.

Ilya literally felt the frosty air pass through his legs, but he immediately shuddered when he saw a clawed paw lay like a shadow on the bed, grabbing his ankle. The creature pulled the man to the edge of the bed.

— no! Let go!

— It's delicious.

Skobov managed to escape. He jumped onto the bed, pressed himself against the wall again, throwing the blanket on the floor. The snide laughter turned into a growl of displeasure. The bed lifted off the floor and landed on it with a bang, only a few seconds later.

"I'm hungry,— a gruff voice ordered. — I want to eat Ilyusha.

The man looked more and more at the window, behind which the dawn was slowly beginning. Snow was falling. Ilya would be able to jump out of the bed into the window, even be able to smash it with his body, but then there was the emptiness of the tenth floor, without a balcony and no hope of a successful landing. However, if he manages to catch on a window sill or a frame...

"He'll leave," the man said aloud.

—Ilyusha,— they growled from below, and the bed rose again.

"You can't have me, you bastard.

Skobov pushed off from the wall. He took a step to the edge of the bed. Summoning all his strength, he abruptly threw the body towards the window. I closed my eyes so as not to cut myself with shards…

The cold rushed over the heated body. He held him down with icy hands, making his heart stop and then beat in a frenzied rhythm. Ilya spread his arms, trying to catch something. He felt no support.… I didn't feel like I was falling. He opened his eyes and froze, unable to breathe.

Skobov was hanging above the floor. The window was about five centimeters away. Ilya saw the sun rising outside. Like heavy clouds, they gradually make room for him. Like snow from large flakes, it becomes fine and almost imperceptible.

The man turned to the bed. In front of him stood the One Who Lives Under The Bed. He was not a ghostly shadow, but his true self.

— Ilyusha is delicious, — there was a malicious laugh.

Skobov screamed.